Journey of Recovery with Bipolar

How rowing improved my mental health.  I have been struggling with depression  for the past two years, but in March 2016 my condition became critical. I started displaying elevated mood with thought disorder. As the days went by, I was sleeping less but still had buckets of energy; I was consumed by creating my own businesses and was planning on investing large sums of money into them. With no insight that I was becoming poorly, my manic episode went untreated, and I very quickly became acutely ill. I started presenting with psychotic symptoms; I was hallucinating and had delusions of grandeur. I dyed my hair bright colours and wore odd clothing. I believed I had 'inner mermaid powers' and that I could levitate! I also thought I was seeing butterflies which represented good and evil spirits. Eventually my behaviour became so erratic that I was taken into A and E as it was feared that I was becoming a danger to myself. I was sectioned there under the Mental Healt

There are many elements which have helped my recovery. Mindfulness has been at the centre of my recovery therapy. It is a useful tool in finding inner peace. I have shared a mindfulness exercise which can be practiced individually or within a group. Mindfulness tree exercise: Find a comfortable postion to sit in, where you can feel relaxed but alert. With your piece of paper and pen start to draw a tree. Enter into this exercise with no prior judgements of your drawing abilities or any preconceptions of what a tree should look like. Just allow yourself to freely draw whatever your interpretation of a tree may be. As you hold your pencil, take a few moments to focus on the feeling of your pencil between your fingers. This is something we do almost every day– but very rarely do we pay attention to how it actually feels to hold a pen in our hands. Deliberately pay attention to each element of tree as you draw it.  The winding roots that achor the tree into the earth. The